See Miguel Run. Run Miguel Run.

Miguel sat in his chair and sighed. He nestled in its depths, his body naturally finding the contours that long use had created in the musty upholstery.

He wished he could sleep… but he had another Run in a couple of hours and it wouldn’t do him well if he ignored his handler’s message.

He set an alarm for an hour and fifteen minutes on his phone. The outdated phone was almost as old as he was and was the only real piece of tech he had, and even that he only had because Renji had spotted him the creds to have it. If Miguel had had the money, he would have gotten a wrist and eye implant. Then again, if he had had the money, he wouldn’t be a Runner. He wouldn’t be in a room the size of a closet, sitting in a moldy chair, hungry, and trying not to think of how he was going to Run when he barely had enough calories in him to stay awake let alone move the way he needed to.

His stomach growled, as if the mere thought of his next meal had awakened it from its slumber.

“Calláte, wey.” Miguel told his unruly stomach. “I’d feed you if I could.”

Miguel dug in his pocket and pulled out a small pouch of large pills. Called ‘pellets’ in Runner slang, though they looked like drugs, they were actually a combination of caffeine, fiber, easily digestible carbs, and highly condensed sugar. Not enough to prevent you from full starvation, but enough to keep you going. He popped a few into his mouth, crunching them with a wince at the taste of cardboard and stale dehydrated marshmallows they had.

If nothing else they made his hunger feel more bearable, at least for the four or so hours he needed.

He was running low on pellets too. But after this Run he could buy more, maybe even buy a few meals of real food.

“Okay,” he said aloud to himself and his stomach. “Maybe not real real food. But real enough for you to shut up, eh?”

Organic ‘real’ food was hard to come by anymore. Real meat. Real veggies. Real fruit. They were all luxuries someone like him living in the slums of New Cali would never see. The simulated processed stuff he could afford was supposed to taste just like the real stuff, but Miguel knew better.

Once, when he had been much younger, maybe about five, his abuelita had given him an orange slice for his birthday. Real orange. His grandmother had had a tree once. It had been an orange tree. She had used that tree and its fruit to support the whole family, until his uncle Donato had sold it out from under her to pay for his own mounting debts. The family had seen hard times ever since.

Even in the ten years since, he had never forgotten how sweet, how juicy, that taste of orange had been.

No, real food tasted a lot different from the artificially engineered stuff he could get here. But Miguel wasn’t greedy, and he wasn’t stupid. Real or not, he would eat what he could afford regardless of its origin. Especially if it kept him alive.

Miguel rummaged in his other pocket until his hand clasped around the small lump of metal he had been expecting to find and secretly relieved was still there.

He pulled it out for what he thought must been the thousandth time.

It was a locket in the shape of heart. Old, dirty, and even flaking off some of its cleaner shinier pieces of metallic paint to reveal the cheap metal it was actually made of, it still held his attention.

He opened it up see the worn picture of a pretty smiling woman. He didn’t know who she was. But she was happy and the sun shone behind her in a blue sky that, while a little faded in the photo, at least didn’t look fake. The light played across her hair making part of her auburn hair seem almost blonde. The smile she gave seemed genuine, happy. There wasn’t any underlying worry or falsehood in that smile. She was just happy.

Had Miguel ever met anyone actually happy? Had he ever seen anyone smile without at least a hint of worry or lie in their eyes? Yes, he probably had. But not on any adult. Not on anyone who could think of their future. He was sure he too had smiled like that once. Before his smiles had faded away with the knowledge of his place in the world and how much the world cared for smiles and little Hispanic boys without a family. He was sure of it.

He stared at the photo thinking of sunlight and the taste of oranges until his alarm went off.

He met up with Renji on the rooftop of a long since shut down and abandoned factory overlooking the more affluent upper districts. It had once made cat food, at least that’s what Miguel thought from the faded signage of a grinning cat surrounded by cartoon fish and what he assumed were chicken drumsticks.

People had a hard time feeding themselves let alone pets. It was no wonder it was abandoned.

“I’ve got a big one for you esta noche, Miguel,” Renji, his handler, a scruffy looking half-Japanese half Filipino said between puffs of a battered e-cigarette. “Client is looking for a delivery from the upper Blanco District to an address in the lower slums. High contraband. Needs it fast and quiet. So high creds, but there’s some risk. But that’s the game for a Runner, right? You up for it, flaco?”

“You know me, Renji,” Miguel said popping his last pellets into his mouth with a crunch. “I’m hungry.”

“That’s what I want to hear,” Renji said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “There is a… peaceful protest… in the East Quarter a half mile from the pickup. So, the Pandas are in full force. You get caught you’ll end up gassed and your skull cracked, intiendes?”

Miguel nodded.

‘Pandas’ were the private security forces employed by the elite of the upper districts to protect the peace. In reality, they were a heavily-armed and armored privatized military police that were used to keep the lower districts in line. They were called ‘Pandas’ due to the coloring of their armor. White chest, black arms and legs. With them in full force anyone one without a Gate Pass embedded in their wrist would be detained. Probably beaten… or worse.

“What is the protest about this time?” Miguel asked wondering if he had missed the news on another death or instance of brutality the Pandas hadn’t been able to censor or scrub off the net.

“The usual,” Renji replied with a scoff. “Food. Jobs. Medicine. Humanity. Like anyone has any one of those to spare.”

Miguel shrugged. It wasn’t any of his business.

“The world must be a simple place for you, eh, Miguel? You just need to run.”

“And eat.”

“Yeah, yeah. And eat, flaco. We do this job right and we both won’t have to worry about food for a while, intiendes, Miguel?”

“Yeah, I got you,” Miguel said reaching out for the scrap of paper that presumably had the meeting place.

Renji held it from him a moment using his more adult height to easily keep it out of Miguel’s reach.

“Aya, Miguel. What do you say?”

“Thanks, Renji, you’re the best,” Miguel said in a mocking sing-song voice.

“That’s right,” Renji said handing him the info. “And don’t you forget it. Not many are willing to take on a Runner as young you, my little flaco. I’m taking a real risk here.”

“And yet I’m the one doing the Run, leaping from rooftop to rooftop and liable to get my brains splattered on the pavement or by a Panda,” Miguel said snatching the paper and running to the edge of the rooftop in the direction of the Blanco District.

“That’s what makes our partnership work, flaco,” Renji called after Miguel’s back as the teenager leapt off the rooftop. “Mutual risk and reward!”

Getting to the upper Blanco District, passed Panda patrols, and avoiding the cameras and drones employed by the various buildings he had to traverse was par for the course for any Runner. It was what they did. Smuggle goods to and from the poor and rich districts without the Pandas or other authorities being the wiser. It took patience, guts, and a lot of athleticism. Miguel was good for being so young and small. However even the best Runners didn’t do it for long. Either caught by patrols, injured or worse by the time they were in their thirties. A few like Renji retired to become handlers themselves but they were a rarity.

The pickup had been easy enough, the protest being enough of a distraction for the Pandas to leave more wiggle room in their patrol pattern especially for someone as small as Miguel. He was now carrying the package in the ratty messenger bag he used for his runs. Only the outside was of the bag was in bad condition. It was sturdy and way more reliable than it looked. It was also a lot less likely to get attention.

He was almost out of the upper Districts, running full tilt on the rooftop of a luxury condo complex when he heard a sound that almost made him freeze on the spot.

A ka-chak followed by an electric whine.

“FREEZE KID!” He heard the telltale amplified voice of a Panda yell across the roof.

Going against the instinct to slow down Miguel sped up.

“HE’S RUNNING!”

“I GOT HIM.” Miguel heard another voice from around the corner of an air conditioning unit he was running by and the world went black simultaneously with the slamming of his skull into something very hard.

Miguel was on the ground wincing as head throbbed and his vision kept blurring in and out.

“Any ID on him?”

“Nah, just his phone and his cheap piece of crap. What’s in the bag?”

Miguel heard the metallic crunch and clatter of his locket being crushed and discarded.

The other nearby Panda whistled through his helmet.

“Would you look at all this… this has got to be, what two maybe three hundred k of medical contraband? Where’d this little piece of gutter scrum get it all?”

“We could let the supe ask him… or we could throw the scrummie off the roof and keep it ourselves.”

Miguel’s eyes popped open and his body sprang into action upon the mention of his casual murder. Despite the pain in his head and the wobbly feeing in his legs he pushed himself up and ran towards the two armored men. He shouldered between the two snatching his bag and the package and pushing the two guards off balance.

‘H-hey!” One exclaimed as he nearly tumbled off the roof.

Miguel jumped off the roof onto the next building and ran without looking back. Like his life depended on it. He knew it did.

Even with his jelly legs he outran the two Pandas easily dodging and ducking in to the shadows of rooftops and other buildings until he was sure he was safe and finally found a corner to rest, breathing heavily.

He looked into the bag.

Insulin. Bottles and bottles of the stuff. Enough to where if he sold it on the black market he‘d be set for more than just a few days or weeks. This would be years. This was his ticket out of the slums.

This… this was people’s lives… dozens of them.

He sat quietly in his corner for a while, wishing he had his locket, wishing he could taste his grandmother’s oranges, wishing that for once he could be greedy.

But… he was Miguel.

End